


Done

by theleaveswant



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Citadel Apartment, Exhaustion, F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, Flirting, Hot Tub, Lust, Mass Effect 3: Citadel, Sexual Frustration, Unresolved Sexual Tension, after the awkward balcony conversation, after the pull-ups, endorphins, exercise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-12
Updated: 2015-02-12
Packaged: 2018-03-12 00:12:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3337445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theleaveswant/pseuds/theleaveswant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Okay, okay." Vega, mollified, turns to resume pummeling the heavy bag. Before he gets into it, though, he throws one more impressed look over his shoulder. "Damn! You still got it. Don't let anybody tell you different."</p><p>"Don't worry, I won't." Shepard crosses behind him and flops onto her back on the bed, sinking into the thick duvet and pretending his wording doesn't make her feel old.</p><p>(A little what-might-have-been after Shepard breaks James' pull-up record.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Done

Shepard laughs at Vega's apparently compulsive cheek. "Don't tease a girl when she's winded."

"Okay, okay." Vega, mollified, turns to resume pummeling the heavy bag. Before he gets into it, though, he throws one more impressed look over his shoulder. "Damn! You still got it. Don't let anybody tell you different."

"Don't worry, I won't." Shepard crosses behind him and flops onto her back on the bed, sinking into the thick duvet and pretending his wording doesn't make her feel old.

183 pull-ups. Take that, you advances turner-downer—and take _that_ , chances of convincing him that you're an ordinary, attainable woman. Shepard sighs and makes a halfhearted duvet angel, stretching out like an apathetic starfish. Her arms have gone rubbery and she can already tell which muscles are going to complain tomorrow. She could really go for a nice, hot—"I have a hot tub," she announces.

"Whadya say?" The thudding stops while Vega catches the bag to listen to her.

"There's a hot tub at the top of those stairs." Shepard moves a listless arm vaguely in the direction of the nearer staircase. She frowns. "That's a stupid amount of stairs."

Vega doesn't comment and he doesn't go back to punching. Raising her head to look at him is more challenging than Shepard is used to. "What's wrong?"

Vega is studying her with. . . She's actually not sure what to call that focused tension, but when he catches her looking back he looks away. He clears his throat before speaking and when he does it's in a noticeably lower register. "You look done."

Shepard laughs huskily and drops her head back onto the bed. "I feel done."

"No, I mean you look _done_."

"Hm?" Shepard blinks when it clicks. "Done. Past—what is it, participle?—past whosits of do."

"Um," Vega says.

"The euphemistic do, as in 'I would do him'."

"Yeah."

"Done means debauched."

Vega swallows and nods. He shifts a step away from the bag, towards the bed, farther into her field of vision. 

Shepard takes stock of her body—lying spreadeagled on top of the comforter, taking deep breaths; a film of sweat drying on her skin and spiking up her hair; her cheeks flushed and eyes hazy with fatigue and endorphin hum. Yeah. Even fully clothed, Shepard looks like she might've just completed a very different sort of workout.

"Huh," says Shepard.

Vega has shuffled to the foot of the platform supporting the bed and now stands just beyond Shepard's toes, watching her with appreciable distress.

"Are you okay?" she asks with a raised eyebrow and an amused purr.

"Not really," he says.

"Why's that?"

"Everything I just said upstairs, and now this. . . It's something else."

"Done pushes buttons?"

Vega's eyebrows rise on a wistful sigh. "Done makes me want to take credit."

Shepard chuckles. "Well. If I'd known that I'd be pretty smug right now."

"You're smug right now anyway." An astute observation.

"More smug." Shepard smirks at the ceiling. "The cat that got the cream." 

Vega . . . groans? Shepard's smirk widens into a grin. That was a grade-A bona fide groan.

It's lust he's staring at her with, not the prurient consideration he's flaunted since she allowed him to keep calling her 'Lola' but raw, unambiguous hunger. Shepard can almost see the inner battle he's waging over crawling onto the bed to join her. If she pushed him now. . . No. He set a boundary, she'll respect it. No matter how wet the idea of snapping his resolve with a beckoning finger might, hypothetically, make her.

"I should probably go upstairs and wash," she says slowly, and Vega's eyes widen at the possibilities in that invitation but Shepard has made up her mind, "and you should probably get going."

"But—" he starts to protest but Shepard rolls onto her side away from him and puts her feet over the edge to sit up.

"You know the way to the door. Ask Glyph if you need directions anywhere else—anywhere not this apartment," she clarifies when she hears the potential for selective interpretation.

Vega sighs. "Yeah. Okay. That's probably. . . Thank you." Shepard really shouldn't get such a kick out of that mingled sincerity and regret.

She waits for him to leave the room in the direction of the front entrance before attempting to stand, her limbs now rubbery for an entirely different reason. Step by step she approaches the stairs, then leans her weight on the railing as she slowly trudges up them.

Shepard intends to take _full_ advantage of those hot tub jets.


End file.
